Slum library at K S Garden slum

I still remember how I used to enjoy the company of the story books in my childhood that taught me endless life lessons through the interesting stories that often began with 'Once upon a time..' For every fairy-tale that we read, whether consciously or unconsciously, we do come across numerous remote life lessons. In fact, people with reading lives are not only more knowledgeable but socially better off because the books provide for communication skills, reasoning skills as well as comprehending skills through their various versions.

Yet, we know that many children in slums are not being educated which also means they are usually illiterate. So why bother to provide them with library? As long as they can access to the books, it eventually would generate motivation to those children to learn. Creating suitable environment for the children to prosper, is the first and the best thing that we could do.

Yet, the reality is that the children in slums, do not get such opportunity to widen their knowledge and imagination which enable them to dream for better future. Children in slums, spend most of their times, labouring in the deadly heat, begging on the street or wandering about dangerous places like railway tracks or congested roads.

For many of us, our childhoods remain as treasured memories and a sacredly protected area where we had got enough rooms to stay innocent and imaginative, able to keep away from the harsh reality which is dying to eat up on our livelihood. It wouldn't be wrong to say our childhoods are shaped through the literature and its culture, the books. But what about those children in slum? Doesn't everybody deserve an opportunity to be imaginative, being a child? Therefore the idea of slum library seems a fair plan for our welfare society. The idea was proposed by one of St. Joseph's former student, Geetha, currently working as a teacher in Mumbai Unit of